Fun fact I learned this week: refined sugar is in just about everything that tastes good.
That includes sweets (baked goods, ice cream, candy, fruit juices) but it’s also found in peanut butter, pasta sauce, soups, salad dressings, ketchup, salsa, most processed breads and pastas, and cereals, among countless other food products.
After researching for a few days, it became clear that totally cutting out refined sugars from my diet — my challenge for the week — would be a bigger investment than I had anticipated. I would have to make most of my food from scratch, using whole, organic ingredients. I became dependent on Pinterest and healthy-mom blogs, bookmarking “guilt-free” recipes left and right, and trying to find underhanded ways to eat junk food. I even enlisted the closest thing you can find to free nutritionists, my incredibly healthy and knowledgeable friends Lena and Lily.
The two of them provided hugely successful guidance this week, offering creative recipes and expert tips whenever I needed; for example, they reminded me that I couldn’t cut out “sugar” because sugar is in fruits and vegetables and I need them to survive. I anticipate they will reappear in future “week without” articles.
So, to get the ball rolling, why did I eliminate refined and processed sugars? If you have 15 minutes to spare, let Dr. Sanjay Gupta explain on 60 Minutes:
If you don’t, Lily offers this sound-byte: “Because it’s chemically addictive and a chronic toxin. It has zero nutritional value and poisons you in various ways over time.” Funnily enough, she’s not wrong.
But what actually happened during my week without refined sugars?
I woke up Friday morning, made a veggie omelet and headed right to Greenberry’s on Barracks to finish an essay and create a grocery list (that was the first time in my life that I didn’t order a chocolate croissant when I had the opportunity and, honestly, I don’t ever want to be in that position again). My inaugural trip to Harris Teeter took two full hours of wandering down aisles and checking labels, and by the end, my cart was mostly full of fresh produce, fresh meat, and fresh dairy, with almost nothing processed. Pro tip: kettle-cooked potato chips are completely sugar free.
Over the course of the week, I cooked routinely everyday — usually omelets for breakfast, turkey sandwiches for lunch, and baked fish or chicken, roasted sweet potatoes and a green veggie for dinner. What I lacked in sugar, I made up for with butter, oil, and salt. Because I’m totally dependent on bread, I baked homemade bread rolls (I accidentally doubled the recipe, so we still have 28 of these yeasty bread patties in our freezer if you’re interested), and I learned how to make banana pancakes with only bananas, eggs, baking powder, and cinnamon. Whenever a craving for something sweet would hit me, I just put frozen fruit, water, and some ice cubes in the blender and enjoyed a smoothie. To change things up, I tried the newcomer to the Corner, Roots, for the first time (confirming the sugar-free status of each ingredient before selection) and went back three more times before my week was up.
When my roommates cooked a BBQ chicken pizza one night, and a friend brought over Oreos and Reese’s cups for a movie day, saying no to those snacks was neither fun nor easy. Even though I was feeling cleansed, I experienced some serious cravings for Campus Cookies and Ben and Jerry’s and would sometimes get irritable for no reason (I’m sure my roommates will readily attest to this).
Perhaps the biggest takeaway I had from this experience was that, to consistently eat in this way, you need two things: time and money. First, my decision to undergo this experiment during fall break was strategic — I’m not sure I could’ve cooked three meals a day amidst classes, as the sheer hours that went into meal planning and baking were all-consuming. Second, buying enough fresh fruits and vegetables, lean meats, organic products, and cooking ingredients added up — quickly. I bit off a big chunk of my monthly grocery budget and will have to plan accordingly for the weeks that followed.
Yet overall, I was taken aback by the fact that I could actually do this. Yes, at times, ketchup or maple syrup or a cookie would’ve been nice, but I came to understand that just because food is there, doesn’t mean I have to eat it. This week inspired me to think differently about what I put in my body and how it affects how I feel. I’ve already noticed differences in my eating habits since the week ended.
So, week one: check. For the next column, I’ll be going one week with one hour of meaningful, impactful exercise each day. This one might kill me.
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